They set down the bier there, gladly. They strip away the coffin’s gay upper garment; they leave but the under-dress of black box, painted to that favor with pitch. They shove it into the grave-digger’s arms, where he stands in the trench, in the soft earth, rich with bones. He lets it slide swiftly to the ground--thump! _Ecco fatto!_
The two boys pick up the empty bier, and dance merrily away with it to the riva-gate, feigning a little play after the manner of children,--“Oh, what a beautiful dead!”
The eldest of the pleasant ruffians is all the pleasanter for _sciampagnin_, and can hardly be persuaded to go out at the right gate.
We strangers stay behind a little, to consult with mother spectator-- Venetian, this. “Who is the dead man, signore?”
“It is a woman, poor little thing! Dead in child-bed. The baby is in there with her.”
It has been a cheerful funeral, and yet we are not in great spirits as we go back to the city.
For my part, I do not think the cry of sea-gulls on a gloomy day is a joyous sound; and the sight of those theatrical angels, with their shameless, unfinished backs, flying off the top of the rococo façade of the church of the Jesuits, has always been a spectacle to fill me with despondency and foreboding.
On a small canal, not far from the railroad station, the gondoliers show you a house, by no means notable (except for the noble statue of a knight, occupying a niche in one corner), as the house of Othello. It was once the palace of the patrician family Moro, a name well known in the annals of the Republic, and one which, it has been suggested, misled Shakespeare into the invention of a Moor of Venice. Whether this is possibly the fact, or whether there is any tradition of a tragic incident in the history of the Moro family similar to that upon which the play is founded, I do not know; but it is certain that the story of Othello, very nearly as Shakespeare tells it, is popularly known in Venice; and the gondoliers have fixed upon the Casa Moro in question as the edifice best calculated to give satisfaction to strangers in search of the True and the Memorable. The statue is happily darkened by time, and thus serves admirably to represent Othello’s complexion, and to place beyond the shadow of a doubt the fact of his residence in the house. Indeed, what can you say to the gondolier, who, in answer to your cavils, points to the knight, with the convincing argument, “There is his statue!”